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Newsflash Don Drummond, neoliberal economics don't work

2012-02-18T11:36:00.001-05:00

Full story in Toronto Star: Walkom: The real victims of the Drummond report’s cuts This Drummond guy, a bank economist--which essentially means he knows nothing about economics and is simply peddling neoliberal dogma--is really out of touch with reality. These kinds of massive government cutbacks when the economy is shaky are just plain dangerous. Putting more people out of work, and letting the

Islam and the Arab Spring

2011-12-05T13:52:00.001-05:00

With elections being held in Tunisia and Egypt, sites of successful popular uprisings which overthrew dictators, it is interesting to note the role of Islam in the Arab Spring movement. The actual protests that made up the Arab Spring in these countries were remarkable in that the Islamists had virtually no role in them. They were popular uprisings by people whose frustration with dictatorship

Ideology, Capitalism, and Science

2011-11-17T14:29:00.001-05:00

The function of science and technology as an ideological support for capitalism has fundamentally changed in recent years. While previously, as pointed out by the Frankfurt School, science and technology under the guise of objective neutrality, would be constantly evoked by the bourgeois as justification for capitalism. The argument operated in that capitalism was seen as scientific, a natural

Proposal for Online Voting in Canada

2011-08-18T12:20:00.000-04:00

Elections Canada is finally proposing to do a test of internet-based voting for a byelection sometime around 2013. Being able to vote over the internet seems like a no-brainer. It will make it much easier and more convenient to vote. Online voting is especially needed in order to get youth to vote. It would also help in rural areas where people may need a car to drive to the nearest polling

2011 Canadian Election Results and Analysis

2011-05-03T23:36:00.000-04:00

The Conservatives have got their majority, and Stephen Harper will be able to operate a "benign dictatorship" (his own description of majority governments, circa 1997) for the next four years. The rise of the NDP is awesome, as is the death of the Bloc Quebecois. The Liberals are where they deserve to be, way back in 3rd place. It seems that with Ignatieff as leader, someone who represents the

Polls, Predictions, and the NDP Surge

2011-04-23T01:08:00.000-04:00

The election is getting interesting. The NDP have surged in support and are now tied with the Liberals nationally. Furthermore the NDP have moved ahead of the Bloc and are in first in Quebec. In the rest of Canada, the NDP has pulled into second place in every province except Ontario. It will be interesting to see if all those Liberals who for years have told NDP supporters to "strategically"

What if Canada used the Proposed British Electoral System?

2011-04-20T20:17:00.000-04:00

The UK, the birthplace of the parliamentary system used by Canada, is having a referendum on switching their electoral system from first past the post to alternative vote. With the UK becoming a three party system, the two-party oriented first past the post system clearly produces distorted results, so as part of the coalition government deal between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, a

Why ProjectDemocracy.ca is Ridiculous

2011-04-18T18:12:00.001-04:00

The website projectdemocracy.ca is being passed around, and is a strategic voting site meant to advise people who to vote for in order to block a Conservative majority. On the surface this seems like a good idea, but if you look at it closely, the site is deeply flawed, and appears if anything, to simply be a means of bolstering the faltering Liberal Party. Let's analyze some surface problems,

Seat Projections under a Real Electoral System April 15th Polling Data

2011-04-17T01:09:00.000-04:00

See this post for an explanation of what I am up to here. EKOS Seat projection, April 15th, current system: Conservative 131 Liberal 93 NDP 38 Green 0 BQ 45 Independent 1 A Conservative minority government with potential Conservative-NDP or Liberal-NDP-BQ coalitions, although both the Liberals and Conservatives think coalitions are somehow undemocratic,

What if Canada Didn't Have an Obsolete Electoral System?

2011-04-16T22:04:00.000-04:00

With a Canadian election afoot, the question of strategic voting is raising its ugly head again. People are trying to figure out whether to "strategically" vote for a party they don't actually support, in order to block the Conservatives from getting a "majority" government. Of course strategic voting is self-defeating since it only reproduces the same two party structure, and prevents swings in

From Cyborg to Cylon

2010-11-24T22:47:00.000-05:00

In her “Cyborg Manifesto” Donna Harraway posits the “ironic myth” of the cyborg as a model for political identity.[1] While much of what Harraway has to say about the cyborg is attractive, it will be argued here that from a cosmopolitan political perspective, the cyborg myth fails to provide this new model of political identity Harraway is after. The

Average People Don't Care About Democracy

2010-11-22T14:04:00.000-05:00

Reading this excellent article in the Star the other day about the erosion of Canadian democracy, the most striking thing is that people do not care. Harper has a minority government and needs support from other parties to pass anything, but in practice, the last 4 years of minority government have actually seen parliament's power eroded, rather than increased. The Conservative government twice

Why Nothing Happened: Responding to the Economic Crisis in a Post-Political Society

2010-11-10T20:31:00.001-05:00

This is a paper I presented at a conference last year. Contrary to the other speakers who were proclaiming the death of neoliberalism, I claimed we would have a period of neoliberalism-lite, then go back to neoliberal orthodoxy. The return to hard neoliberalism came faster than I expected. Now we have movements like the Tea Party who are demanding a return to an aggressive neoliberalism, because

When Religions Attack!

2010-10-31T19:31:00.000-04:00

I've been collecting links to news stories about religious lunacy that I was going to comment on, but I never got around to it. So I thought I might as well post them all in one go since I likely never will get around to writing full posts about them. Hindus killing Christians: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7634100.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7637087.stm Maybe we

Review of Derek Barker's Tragedy and Citizenship

2010-10-28T20:21:00.002-04:00

In an era when citizenship has been mostly drained of its political content, Derek Barker’s Tragedy and Citizenship: Conflict, Reconciliation, and Democracy from Haemon to Hegel[1] provides a conception of active, engaged citizenship that is thoroughly political. Barker engages in a novel interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone to demonstrate how a properly political citizenship needs to be

The Media, G20, and Alcohol-Free Beer

2010-06-27T23:55:00.000-04:00

The Media coverage of the G20/G8 protests in Toronto this weekend has been stupid to the point of hilarity. They put forth a series of illogical arguments and thus create a narrative that the average person all too willingly swallows. However it takes about 3 seconds of thought to realize how logically implausible this narrative actually is. The first of these arguments is the supposed media

Summer Blogging Season

2010-05-11T11:43:00.000-04:00

Blogging season has begun once again (May-August) so I hope to start posting some new stuff on here over the next few months. I had planned to write two more pieces on Battlestar Galactica, but I can't make sense of the notes I wrote. It had something to do with how Colonel Tye was the real hero of the show for overcoming what he was born as, in favour of making himself what he was, which has

The Anti-Political Nature of Love in Battlestar Galactica

2009-09-09T12:12:00.003-04:00

Contrary to Hardt and Negri (Multitude, 2004, p. 352) who see love as the basis of political action for the multitude, love is actually inherently anti-political, and as Arendt argues, possibly "the most powerful of all antipolitical human forces" (The Human Condition, 1958, p. 242). Arendt goes on to argue that love "destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others" (p.

Battlestar Galactica and Technology

2009-09-08T11:17:00.006-04:00

More human than human?The series finale of Battlestar Galactica was a failure on two counts. First it wrapped up all the mysteries that remained to be solved by the simplistic and lazy explanation of "god did it". Second the finale, contrary to the spirit of the rest of the show, takes an anti-technology position that makes even less sense than invoking god as an explanation for things left

Woody Hegel Barcelona

2009-08-20T11:06:00.007-04:00

Woody Allen's 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona brings up a lot of interesting themes relating to love which fit within the Hegelian ideas of desire and satisfaction. As Alexandre Kojève explains in his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, desire is the presence of a lack, and a state of dissatisfaction. You can only desire what you do not posses, since possession means there is no longer a

Are the Conspiracy Theory movements a form of Post-Fascism?

2009-05-26T13:14:00.002-04:00

I must admit that I have a perverse interest in conspiracy theories. Not as someone crazy enough to believe them, but from a political point of view, of viewing them as a novel social movement in the same way I am interested in the resurgence of religion. Having recently read G.M. Tamás' excellent 2000 article On Post-Fascism, I am curious as to whether the broad conspiracy theory movement could

BC-STV and Multitude

2009-05-13T12:35:00.005-04:00

In their book Multitude, Hardt and Negri (H&N) argue that a desire for a more significant form of democracy can be the glue that holds together various diverse protest movements. The shared desire for democracy can generate a common cause that the multitude can rally behind in order to come together to bring revolutionary change to society. I find myself very sympathetic to much of what is

Review of Wendy Brown’s Regulating Aversion

2009-03-31T13:03:00.002-04:00

Wendy Brown’s 2006 book Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire subjects the idea and practice of tolerance to a much needed critical evaluation. Much of the book, especially chapter five which examines the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance, contains precisely this much needed critical evaluation of how tolerance is deployed, but ultimately the book falls flat

Review of David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism

2009-02-12T19:47:00.002-05:00

David Harvey’s 2005 book A Brief History of Neoliberalism traces the origins of neoliberalism as a form of political economy through its recent history in an attempt to explain what the overarching goal of neoliberalism actually is. Although Harvey can be vague as to what the actual economic policies of neoliberalism entail, his argument as to what this new form of political economy sought to

The Erosion of Private and Political Space in Contemporary Capitalist Society

2009-01-05T12:06:00.002-05:00

Since the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a sustained attack on both the public and the private spheres of modern society. Paradoxically, people feel their privacy is being eroded, while at the same time, public goods are privatized. It will be argued here that industrial capitalism, and neoliberalism in particular, has led to a copenetration of the public and private